You need a few nibbles to keep your brain fired up as you study through the night , this regimen is contributing to brain rot, but brain rot can be minimized..
You’ve got tests to write and half a dozen assignments to complete. The light is burning in your room until all hours of the night. Working till late, you need a few nibbles to keep your brain fired up, you haven’t got time for REAL food, so….
Sweets and sodas power your midnight stints.
You don’t really need me to tell you – this is not really “healthy” brain food, I’m pretty sure you know, but you might be thinking – you’re only doing it for a few weeks, until you write your finals, does it really matter ?
This week’s Neurotechnology Tip is designed to make you think twice about sustaining your studies through nibbling on “junk”.
A diet of sweets and soda is dumbing
For rats. And the dumbing occurred in just 6 weeks.
And there is no reason to think, human brains respond any differently.
Nibbling on cookies and washing them down with Coke, could end up knocking a few percentage points off your final results.
Rats sipping on soda
Researchers allowed rats to sip on a high fructose corn syrup solution, whenever they felt like it.
High-fructose corn syrup, is modern day “sugar” – it pops up in pop tarts, cold drinks and other processed snacks. It is estimated that the average westerner scoffs down around 40 pounds i.e. 18 kilos of the stuff, each year.
The animals followed this regimen for 6 weeks. At the end of the time period, the researchers required the rats to take a little test. The rats had to remember the way out of maze.
Soda sippers sucked at maze running
Surprise, surprise – the rats who were nibbling on “junk”, struggled to escape the maze.
So the lesson – don’t eat the stuff ! ! !
DON’T hit the back button, just yet. The research team included a second group of rats in their study – it is these rats that I want you to try to emulate.
A fishy fix for soda sippers
The second group of rats also sipped away at high fructose corn syrup, but they also took a fishy supplement i.e. omega-3.
The rats who supplement with omega-3s whizzed through the maze, managing to escape in a flash.
Better body chemistry for students
Your body chemistry is going to have an impact on your final grade.
Ideally, you want to feed it healthy nutritious food, exercise a bit and ensure it gets 8 hours of sleep a night.
If ideally is just that – fantasy, cut your brain some slack.
HELP your brain to think
Help it along – loads of studies suggest omega-3s make a difference to brain wiring and performance.
If you’re not going to bother with eating fish, find the money and buy an omega-3 supplement – it may just allow you to get away with “murder”.
NB. Make sure the bottle says omega-3 ONLY. A product with omega-3 and omega-6 is just a waste of your precious bucks.
Further reading
Catch more memories with a little omega-3
This week’s Neurotechnology Tip provides a way improve your working memory, that doesn’t involve hitting the books….
A nation’s diet, trumps it’s economy, when it comes to education
The quality of a nation’s breast milk, impacts how smart the nation is. The more omega-3, the smarter the nation, the more omega-6, the dumber the nation.
Caffeine makes you genuinely smarter
Everyone knows caffeine keeps you going – which helps you focus for longer and thus makes you smarter, but caffeine is also helping you to remember
To wire up your brain a little each week ………………..
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